However, in a 1994 publication the historian William Henry Scott identified instances in Spanish writing where 'Filipino' did refer to 'indio' natives. The idea that the term Filipino was not used to refer to indios until the 19th century has also been mentioned by historians such as Salah Jubair and Renato Constantino. This reflected popular belief, although no such edict has been found.

In 1955, Agnes Newton Keith wrote that a 19th century edict prohibited the use of the word 'Filipino' to refer to indios. The term Indio Filipino appears as a term of self-identification beginning in the 18th century. The term Filipino was sometimes added by Spanish writers to distinguish the indio chino native of the Philippine archipelago from the indio of the Spanish colonies in the Americas, which were free people and legally barred from being used as slaves, unlike those from the Philippines. During the Spanish colonial period, natives of the Philippine islands were usually known in the Philippines itself by the generic terms indio ('Indian (native of the East Indies)') or indigena ' indigenous ', while the generic term chino ('Chinese'), short for indio chino was used in Spanish America to differentiate from the Native American indios of the Spanish colonies in the Americas and the West Indies. The name Filipino, as a demonym, was derived from the term las Islas Filipinas ' the Philippine Islands ', the name given to the archipelago in 1543 by the Spanish explorer and Dominican priest Ruy López de Villalobos, in honor of Philip II of Spain. 11–12 million in Filipino diaspora) Įnglish, Filipino/ Tagalog and other indigenous languages

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